


A Matter of Time

by waltzmatildah



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-28
Updated: 2013-05-28
Packaged: 2017-12-13 05:21:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/820482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: The beautiful dependency of the aftermath.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>In the end it is Skyler who takes the shot.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	A Matter of Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bellonablack](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=bellonablack).



In the end it is Skyler who takes the shot.

Jesse is to her left, completing the macabre tableau, and she knows, _knows without doubt_ , he’d have pulled the trigger himself if left alone for long enough; can read every blank line of resignation on his face with a clarity that has numbed her blood and stolen her breath.

But she takes the shot anyway. Slides the pads of both index fingers into place and squeezes on instinct; shuts her eyes against the inevitability of death.

That it is not her own, for today anyway, is all that matters.

 

 

Her car’s parked off to one side of the emptied out lot. And no matter how ferociously the gun-shot echoes through the surrounding space, she imagines all she can hear is Holly; screaming.

But Holly is not screaming, not here. She’s not even in the car.

The smell of her hair and the childish ring of her laugh, little more than memories that Skyler now clings to; all fingernails and tendons and a choking sort of desperation. 

 

 

Hands close around hers then. And she notes that she’s still got her arms raised to shoulder level, the barrel of the gun still pointed, chest-height, at the now empty horizon.

“Mrs. White,” he’s saying. “Mrs. White. Mrs. White. Mrs. White…”

She blinks, shocked, _in shock_ perhaps. 

She sees his lips, shifting, shifting as he pushes her hand down, twists the gun from her loosening grip and tucks it away, behind his back and out of sight. Out of mind, even.

“What do we do now, Mrs. White?”

 

 

They leave the body where it fell.

She can’t bring herself to touch it. Jesse, she notes, won’t even look at it.

And so they leave the body where it fell; turn, feet shuffling low against the dusty surface of the lot as they head back towards her car.

The sound of the locks sliding open seems absurd in the otherwise silence.

 

 

She pushes him towards her bathroom; sets the shower in motion as he stands in the shadows, the door open to the hallway at his back.

His hands shake as she slides his jacket down arms that hang loosely by his sides.

“What do we do now, Mrs. White?” he says.

Again.

She’s not entirely convinced he knows he’s doing it.

 

 

She leaves him then. Returns to the living room and switches the television on. Pours herself a glass of wine and drags a blanket around her knees as she settles on the couch to wait.

And wait.

And wait.

 

 

The doorbell sounds at the same time an infomercial for a robotic vacuum cleaner bursts to life on the screen. She watches the disc move across the already spotless carpet, counts to fourteen; buys herself the time to suck in a breath.

It feels like the first she’s managed in days.

The doorbell chimes for a second time and she stands, lets the blanket fall to the floor at her feet.

Steps over it absently and opens the front door.

 

 

Jesse reappears afterwards; skinny and grey and still coursing with fine tremors. 

“You weren’t here,” he says, lost, empty, every bit the junkie he swears he no longer is. For a beat, for a single split second, she thinks she can see how he fell prey to all this in the first place.

She laughs, can’t afford to let herself pity him, and he takes a sharp step back, shocked, horrified. Arms folded across his chest; a last ditch attempt at desperate self-preservation.

 

 

“I know,” she answers, and her lips drop into a twisted ghost of a smile that feels both painted on and incredibly _real_ at the very same time.

“I had to go and identify my husband’s body.”

She thinks Jesse might be about to vomit; she continues nonetheless.

“Apparently someone shot him.”


End file.
